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Some evidence exists for an otherwise unknown child-martyr named Quriaqos at Antioch[1]. It is believed that the legends about Saints Quiricus and Julietta refer to him. There are places named after Quriaqos in Europe and the Middle East, but without the name Julietta attached. Cyricus is the Saint-Cyr found in many French toponyms. The cult of these saints was strong in France after Saint Amator, Bishop of Auxerre, brought relics back from Antioch in the 4th century. It is said that Constantine I discovered their relics originally and built near Constantinople a monastery, and not far off from Jerusalem was built a church. In the 6th century the Acts of Quriaqos and Julitta were rejected in a list of apocryphal documents by the Decretum Gelasianum, called as such since the list was erroneously attributed to Pope Saint Gelasius I.

According to legend, Julietta and her three-year (sometimes described as three-month) old Quriaqos had fled to Tarsus and were identified as Christians. Julietta was tortured, and her three-year-old son, being held by the governor of Tarsus, scratched the governor's face and was killed by being thrown down by some stairs. Julietta did not weep but celebrated the fact that her son had earned the crown of martyrdom. In anger, the governor then decreed that Julietta’s sides should be ripped apart with hooks, and then she was beheaded. Her body, along with that of Quriaqos, was flung outside the city, on the heap of bodies belonging to criminals, but the two maids rescued the corpses of the mother and child and buried them in a nearby field.

An alternative version of the story is that Julietta told the governor that his religion could not be accepted by a three-year-old child, whereupon Quiricus testified to his faith, and mother and child were tortured before being decapitated.

A story from Nevers states that one night Charlemagnedreamed he was saved from being killed by a wild boar during a hunt. He was saved by the appearance of a child, who had promised to save the emperor from death if he would give him clothes to cover his nakedness.

There are a few churches in England dedicated to Saint Quiricus and Saint Julietta, including one found at Tickenham[4] and another at Swaffham Prior, in Cambridgeshire. In Cornwall, they can be found in the villages of Luxulyan and St Veep, and there was also once a chapel at Calstock dedicated to these two saints. In Wales there is a least one church dedicated to the saints, in Llanilid, but named as St. Ilid and St. Curig.

The cult of "St. Giric" was formerly much more widespread in Celtic Britain, however. His feast day was one of the principal Welsh holidays, as codified by the laws of Hywel Dda.[5]

Cyriacus in particular is mentioned numerous times in the daily office of the Church of the East as attested in the large collection of prayers and services known as the Hudra. The mention of a saint from Tarsus in such East Syrian traditions suggests that there was considerable early sharing of martyrological traditions despite doctrinal differences between churches.